What Libertarianism Means to Me

I have been asked numerous times to clarify my perspective on libertarianism. The purpose of this discussion is to do that. Here are my principles of libertarianism:

1. The restoration of liberty is a critical need. If liberty interferes with the right to life, the right to life is paramount. The restoration of the right to life is even more critical than the restoration of liberty, and if I must choose, I choose to work for life first. I don't believe in choosing. The exercise of rights may create obligations. When it does, even if the person did not intend the obligation, society must insist that the obligation be fulfilled. If the person refuses to fulfill the obligation voluntarily, it is proper for government to enforce it. Examples: parenthood, someone injured by an accident you caused. Government should do so either by providing courts for redress of grievance (civil suit), or by prosecuting (criminal offenses, with all penalties going to restitution; failure to provide for children or disabled people, with government prosecuting on behalf of the children because they are incapable of bringing their own suit). Government should never be allowed to enact regulations for the purpose of preventing harm, but rather, may enact regulations through laws made only by elected officials (never by an appointed person) which are enforced only if a damage occurs. Our first and foremost goal must be to find a way to erode statism, and enact liberty, and any theoretical discussions of principles which are absolute but interfere with the restoration of liberty must take second place to the actual work of restoring liberty. I am not willing to fritter away opportunities to restore part of liberty for the sake of debating principles. It is not principled to refuse to take advantage of the opportunities offered because they are not pure. This is why in critically important races (primarily President), I believe that it is unprincipled not to vote for someone who could win, because in so doing, you deprive the better candidate of half your vote and give it to his opponent. The practical outworkings of your principles MUST be taken into account. Because of the party structure we have (which is pretty much a consequence of our current constitutions), our wisest activity must occur within one of the two major parties and seek to move that party toward our ideals. The only practical consequence of the establishment of the Libertarian Party has been to remove the pressure to stay in the track of liberty, for the Republican Party. The LP and its candidates have actually served to shove the RP more toward statism, by removing the influences toward liberty from within. It is, in my opinion, unprincipled to engage in any action that has that kind of consequence.

2. Licentiousness is not liberty; it inhibits liberty. It should be possible to define clearly the difference, and to place various activities into one of the two categories unambiguously. To do so requires discernment, but discernment is necessary to ordered liberty. By ordered liberty I mean liberty that allows all to experience liberty. Discernment should be able to identify those behaviors that cause self-harm. Any behavior that causes self-harm is licentious in nature. The Libertarian Party has compromised itself and its drive to restore liberty by taking on the notion that licentiousness is a form of liberty, and especially by placing its emphasis on that issue to the virtual exclusion of the basic issues. Please note that some of my other stands would result in the practical amelioration of some of these issues: the separation of school and state and of medicine and state would result in much less of a perceived conflict between government and licentiousness.

3. No society can afford to ratify licentiousness, and the restoration of liberty in any society that does is a practical impossibility. It won't happen. You may achieve a temporary state, but it isn't stable. Either society disintegrates to the point where the structure needed to support liberty no longer exists, or people demand and get statist solutions, or both.

4. Government needs to stop plundering the people and needs to stop prohibiting any activity which is NOT self-destructive or destructive of others. Government needs to continue to prosecute anybody who seeks to spread self-destructive behavior to others. Government has no role in prohibiting self-destructive behavior that is not being shared with anybody else, or where there are no consequences to anybody else. Government needs to remove the safety net that permits people to live a lifestyle of vice with impunity, without jeopardizing the lives of any unborn babies or children in the process. It needs to encourage all people, even those with unborn babies or children, to become nondependent on government or anybody else outside the immediate family. Government needs to stop funding anything over which the Constitution never gave it authority. There needs to be separation between school and state, medicine and state, the arts and state, and charity and state. Government needs to turn all regulation possible over to private entities. Government needs to maintain a court system and law enforcement systems, and for now, the building and maintaining of major roads. It is practical for all other infrastructure to be done nongovernmentally, and we need to do that as soon as possible. Government needs to protect the people from war, violence, terrorism, and the breach of the borders with anything which is destructive of the mores of society, and of people. It may legitimately do this anywhere in the world, and must do it on foreign soil if doing it on native soil would result in significant loss of life among the people. Government also legitimately keeps records of the ownership of major property, and legitimately assigns the property in the commons to individuals as long as they do not despoil the commons. If the use of property in the commons benefits everyone, then the person who has the property right assigned by the government need not pay anything for its use other than the administrative costs of administering the system. A person who has been assigned the use of property in the commons may not sell that right to anyone for more than he paid for it. Wherever it is possible to establish and defend private ownership without government fiat, the property is not part of the commons. Nobody has the right to use his property, or the property of the commons, to corrupt the minds of children. Where the nature of the property (i.e. spectrum space, air, the water in rivers and oceans) crosses the boundaries of the property of others and cannot be contained, it is part of the commons. The licensee to property in the commons may exercise all ownership rights for the duration of his license. It is effectively a lease. Natural beauty is a gift of God to the people of the world and is thus part of the commons, but places of natural beauty can and must be conveyed into private management with the stipulation that the beauty may not be destroyed, but the place may be managed reasonably in ways that include harvesting the resources. These places also must not be maintained in a way that denies access to the beauty to the disabled. I call for an immediate end to income taxes, inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, and property taxes. All are to be replaced only to the extent necessary for the proper activities of government (all other activities to be shut down), and only by sales and excise taxes. It shouldn't be necessary to increase any other taxes provided the government ceases all illegitimate activity.

5. For something to harm others, it need not be the adjacent link in a chain of causation. It is sufficient if it causes the chain to exist unbroken, and when harm to others is occurring, you must break the chain on its weakest link (i.e. wherever it is easiest to stop the sequence of events). The reality is, activities don't occur in isolation. They are usually part of a chain of events. Perhaps this is one of the areas where libertarianism currently fails, because it doesn't take into account this simple fact of life. If any act results in a person losing the capacity for responsible autonomy, then that act has robbed libertarian society of one responsible individual to help make it work. It may as well be robbed of others if as a result, children are raised badly, and if they in turn raise their children badly, eventually all the hard work will be totally undone. We have too much self-indulgence in this country today, and we need to discourage that. If a particular action makes some other consequence virtually inevitable (except in a handful of cases), then it is certain enough that we can say those consequences are part and parcel of the original act. As they say, hard cases make bad law. So the mere fact that a handful of cases may break the chain for a few instances does not mean that the consequence isn't inherent in the original act. The Founders of the United States showed they recognized these things when one of them said, "Our Constitution was written for a virtuous people and is wholly inadequate to govern any other." They prized virtue and responsibility. In contrast, current libertarians encourage irresponsibility in many ways. They don't want to be reminded that rights carry with them responsibilities; they never talk about it except to make a vague reference to the fact that people must take the consequences of their actions. What is more on point is that people need to be held responsible for their actions. Consequences are capricious and unpredictable, and can happen to innocent bystanders instead of the perpetrator. It is this fact that makes them insufficient.

6. We must seek to force the government to do all that it does in a constitutional manner. Where the structures established by the constitution begin to work against basic rights, they need to be changed. We must deal with the judicial oligarchy, and the sooner, the better.

7. Government is legitimate and necessary when it protects the people from violence and fraud. Fraud includes taking advantage of the state of mind that results from being deceived by another source of information. The Non-Aggression Principle needs to be applied across the board. I do not recognize the "right" to self-harm, consider the idea very dangerous, and the presumption that you have consented to harm absent a specific declaration to be even more dangerous. It totally undermines the NAP. The mere fact that government should leave you alone when you engage in self-harm that affects no one else does not make it a right. Nobody has a right to ask someone else to help him harm himself. To do so violates that person's right to his own integrity. Nobody has the right to give another person permission to aggress against a party who has not explicitly consented. A person's body is his paramount property, and when any other property right comes into conflict with the right to one's body, the right to one's body must prevail.

8. All human beings, from the moment of fertilization to the moment of natural death, are persons. All persons have the unalienable right to life, liberty, and property lawfully acquired. A person has the right to pursue happiness, but pleasure and happiness are not synonymous, and in some cases, pleasure operates against happiness. I follow what I understand of the concept of rational self-interest.

9. By definition, any person who seeks self-harm is rationally, mentally, and legally incapacitated and cannot give lawful consent to anything.

10. We should establish a rite of passage which is appropriately rigorous, and all able bodied persons should only gain the right to vote and engage in adult activities once they have successfully completed the rite. Those who are not able bodied can have an appropriate rite of passage designed for them. A person may undergo the rite at any time after puberty (or for girls, shortly before). Children who have not undergone the rite are not entitled to adult rights, but are entitled to a stable home and family, which means that where children are born naturally to people, the government may not interfere except to prosecute felonious behavior, and government may not place a child for adoption in any home which is not stable and healthy. Juveniles accused of crime are entitled to standard constitutional protections. If the offense is sufficiently heinous, a juvenile should be tried as an adult. If the offense is enough to warrant the death penalty in an adult, it is presumptively heinous. Once a child has completed the rite of passage, he is entitled to take any employment for which he is qualified; there should be no age barrier. But a child who has not completed his education should not be forced to work at any job that would preclude him continuing his education, even if only part-time. A child who has completed the rite of passage is entitled to establish his own household, but if living with his parents, must keep the parental rules. Society needs to enforce that. Society has an obligation to curtail any activity which would tend to corrupt the minds of children, whenever it would be unduly burdensome for parents to take the sole responsibility. Society has an obligation not to undermine the efforts of parents. No person has a right to use his property in a way that will corrupt the minds of children.

11. Children have an obligation to care for their parents when they become dependent, and do not have a right to squander the gifts they have been given, such as good health and education. Enforcing that obligation is the only effective way to eliminate social security.

12. Marriage and military service are privileges, not rights. Military service may be an obligation, but compelling anyone to serve is slavery and is contrary to rights. While in military service, a person gives up his constitutional rights by contract. I do not favor the establishment of any form of compulsory service. Volunteering to serve can be in lieu of a rite of passage. In that case, one must actively serve for a minimum of one year.

In all other cases, unless otherwise noted, I agree with the Libertarian Party platform (as it existed before the major evisceration that happened around 2006 or so).

While I was preparing this essay, I had a talk with one of my sons. This has prompted me to add some thoughts. I have always had a vision in my life, that somehow I, as an individual, could make a significant difference in other people's lives and leave the world a slightly better place when I go. I could change something significant, and for awhile, that change would have an impact for good on the lives of many people. By the grace of God, I was able to do that, when I cofounded Feminists for Life, and operated the organization for five years, bringing it to a point where a group was willing and able to carry it on from there. From what I have learned, a significant proportion of college women were able to choose life for their babies because of the work of Feminists for Life. In all of my dealings with our seven children, I always sought to pass on to them the legacy of thinking they can make a difference. I am happy to say that at least in some cases, we succeeded.

The libertarian movement will succeed if and only if a few people with a vision make it succeed. But in so doing, will it perpetuate itself, or will it succumb to mediocrity? When a person has a vision, self-indulgence is not very attractive. People with a vision are too busy accomplishing something to want to whittle away their time, energy, abilities, and resources on self-indulgence. Are we laying the groundwork for a people with vision? I would have to say we are not. In fact, this is one of the underlying things I sense about the libertarian movement that distresses me so much. What is the purpose of liberty? The real purpose is so that people can be all they are capable of being, so they can rise above mediocrity, and utilize the gifts they have been given. What is the point of liberty if people don't exercise it? I have said for a long time that if you get involved in self-indulgence, if you get involved in licentiousness, you become incapable of exercising liberty. You lose the drive and the capacity. When the population as a whole does this, the inevitable result will be statism! Why? People aren't willing to stand by and watch while someone they love destroys himself. They will want someone to pick up the pieces. They realize they aren't capable of it (really, the only person who can do it is the person himself). They realize they don't have the resources, or they are unwilling to spend them on rehabilitating this person who seems hell-bent on personal destruction. Perhaps they already raised him for 20 or so years. Perhaps they never knew how to direct him in the first place, and they certainly haven't figured it out. What is the first response of most people when confronted with a situation like this? Usually it is to throw up their hands and say, I can't do it, someone else needs to do it, and there are all these lazy and selfish people out there who aren't doing their share, so I need to make them do it. Besides, government has all this money. So government needs to provide for people who refuse to provide for themselves. Encouraging self-indulgence ultimately leads to statism! Because libertarians fail to realize this, they are sowing the seeds of the destruction of liberty once and for all, to the point where nobody will even dream of it. There is a paper circulating, and I don't know who is responsible for it, or whether it is bogus or real, but it basically gives a number of points for how to create a communist country. One of the points is to encourage vice. Thus, people will be indulging in vice, and as long as they are "happy", they won't challenge the tyrants over them. Science fiction stories have been written about how governments deliberately used vice to enslave the people so that the people would not challenge the hegemony of the government. Most common is the use of drugs: get people hooked on drugs that make them happy in a stupor, and they aren't going to fight government oppression. This is a major reason why the current emphasis on legalizing drugs in libertarianism scares the heqq out of me! Most libertarians don't realize it, but when you get hooked on a vice, you are enslaved to that vice. You CANNOT exercise freedom; you don't have the capacity to do so. Theoretical freedom from government doesn't matter. You are a slave. You won't challenge the government encroaching on your rights because you are incapable of it. What in the world do these libertarians think they are trying to do? My theory is that the libertarian movement has been taken over by a bunch of people who don't want the government stopping them from their lives of self-indulgence, and they really don't care about fundamental rights at all. They have infiltrated, and they have persuaded enough other people, that their views prevail, and the more fundamental issues are being lost by the wayside. Those with more vision have long since abandoned libertarianism. They have noplace to go, which means that their vision will die on the vine. Libertarianism has betrayed itself. Libertarianism is now full of groupthink. If you don't support the legalization of vices, you aren't a libertarian. Or so they say. People with more wisdom are being drummed out. Now if you think that the legalization of vices is the most important goal in the world, for whatever reason, you won't like what I have said. But if you have any kind of vision at all, you will realize that we have been had. You will realize that the libertarian movement has been corrupted by people who aren't really seeking true freedom; they just want to be allowed to self-indulge themselves into a stupor, and they don't want any kind of responsibilities getting in the way or interfering with that. And so, they got into the movement with this goal and only this goal in mind, and they have drawn people away from the basic issues. Libertarianism still pays lip service to these fundamental issues, but nothing is being done to fight for these issues. I saw the same thing happen in the National Organization for Women. I originally joined NOW hoping to influence the organization away from abortion. I said from the outset that abortion is bad for women and bad for our rights. As long as people can push a woman into an abortion, they don't have to provide equality, or economic opportunity, or whatever. Women are available as playthings of men, and there will be no consequences to anybody. Slam, bam, thank you ma'am. But NOW became corrupted. Zero Population Growth supporters got into positions of leadership. Abortion became a priority. Now it's about ALL NOW ever works on. It's all it promotes, all it fights for, and all the rest of the goals of equality and opportunity are totally lost. I see the very same thing happening in libertarianism. It's not merely a shame. That's our future that is running down the drain. Do you care? I do!

We should never celebrate our vices. We must remain ashamed of them. Our civilization cannot endure if we start to celebrate self-destruction. It's as simple as that.

So I cannot support "official" libertarianism in its present form, and I sincerely hope you, the reader, will think this through, and decide you cannot, either, and that some changes need to be made. Freedom exists so that we can realize our potential, and so we can make a difference. It doesn't exist so that we can enslave ourselves to our baser nature. Unless freedom is restored in a milieu of virtue, it will be useless. I hope you will take this thought with you and do something with it. We need to turn things around. Unless we do, there will be no liberty in my lifetime, and probably not in yours. So take inspiration, and go make a difference!